After the impact of last year we’re running The Remembrance Project again, this time in two schools and the Sixth Form College.

In the two schools we’re using a fabric banner representing a meadow and sky, one of which we used last year in the Sixth Form College. Onto these students pin fabric flowers on which they’ve written the name of someone special to them who has died. Today I was overseeing the Remembrance Project in one of the schools where over 60 young people have added a remembrance flower to the banner.

At lunchtime there was a gentle stream of students and in chatting with them I asked who they were remembering. Their stories were varied; several grandparents, a tragically stillborn sister, and a surprising number who were remembering relatives they had never known; a godmother who died in one of the 9/11 planes, and a dad who had died less than a year after his son was born. We chatted about the power of the memories their parents carry that now inform their lives and sense of loss. One boy spoke of his passion for sport and how it was apparently a reflection of the dad he never knew.

In all these conversations there is a quiet pride about the people remembered, a living impact of a life lost. “We should do something like this in church,” said a church minister at a leaders breakfast this morning. Yes; perhaps we should.